Dressmaker (3 page)

In the circumstances Margo couldn’t help feeling that she was superfluous. The party was not a knees-up for the neighbours
with a few of Cyril Mander’s business acquaintances on show to make a bit of a splash. She didn’t suppose there would be
any political talk or views on how the war was going. Nor would there be fancy cakes and a few bottles of beer on the sideboard.
The house was swarming with American soldiers and young women in their gladrags. The three-piece suite was quite submerged.
On the hall table there was a pile of mustard-coloured caps, one upon the other, like a plate of sandwiches. She was struck,
as usual, by the dazzling display of lights, in the hall, the front room, the kitchen. She stood blinking, helped out of her
duster coat by the young man who had escorted them the few yards up the street. ‘Thank you,’ she said, and repeated it for
Rita, who said nothing at all, allowing the pink cardigan to be removed from her shoulders. Valerie was wearing a black skirt
with a patent-leather belt about her waist. She was bubbling over with excitement and generosity, explaining that she thought
Rita would never have come if Chuck hadn’t fetched her. Chuck nodded his head lazily, and she put her arm through his and
pressed close to him.

It occurred to Margo that it was a funny name for a
grown man. Surely the whites of his eyes were a shade too milky and the curve of his eyeball somewhat extreme. She remembered
all the stories circulated about English girls marrying GIs and having black children. You could never be sure until it was
too late. Jack said all the decent Americans had left the country before D-Day, ready for the thrust into Europe; only the
riff-raff remained – canteen staff and garage mechanics. Mrs Mander couldn’t wait to tell her all about him. Valerie had met
him at a dance a week ago and he’d taken her out nearly every night since, to the State Restaurant, the Bear’s Paw, to the
repertory company, to some hotel over on the Wirral, very posh by all accounts.

‘The repertory company?’ said Marge, bewildered.

‘To a play,’ said Mrs Mander, ‘with actors.’

‘He must have money to burn.’

‘Well, there’s no harm in that, and he does seem keen, doesn’t he?’

She peered at Marge, trying to gauge what she was thinking, scrutinising her mouth as if she were deaf and needed to lip-read.

‘They certainly seem very thick,’ Margo said, watching the young man at the fireplace with his hand dangling over the white
shoulder of Valerie Mander. On his wrist, strong black hairs and a watch of solid gold.

‘Oh, they are,’ cried Mrs Mander gaily, putting a glass of whisky into her hand and leaving her, waddling out of the doorway
in her midnight blue dress with the enormous skirt.

Cyril Mander was playing the piano very slowly as if
he weren’t sure of the tune. He was in his best blue suit, showing a lot of white cuff, his silver links catching the light.
On the top of the piano was a jug full of lupins and a photograph of son George in his sailor’s uniform. Every time Cyril
struck a chord, the flowers trembled and showered petals on the keys. None of the young couples heeded his playing. Valerie
was looking through the gramophone cabinet for records.

Marge wondered whether the Manders were wise, filling the house with strangers and letting them behave any way they pleased.
There was a war on, of course, and she knew attitudes were different, but there was such a thing as a responsibility. It would
serve Mrs Mander right if she became the proud grandmother of a bouncing piccaninny.

Sipping her drink and shuddering at its strength, she went out into the hall to look for Rita. The coats on the banisters
had slid to the floor. She could see Rita’s cardigan lying all crumpled. As she bent to retrieve the clothing, Cyril Mander
came behind her and seized her by the hips. She was quite embarrassed. He told her she must come and meet people – she mustn’t
be a spoil sport. He took the coats from her, spilling them carelessly on the stairs. Clutching the cardigan, she was propelled
into the living room. Jack detested him – said he was a profiteer and a swine, which was a bit unkind. Margo rather liked
him, though not at such close quarters. He’d made a lot of money out of scrap metal and he did tend to be showy; but that
was preferable to being moody like Jack, or martyred like Nellie.

‘What do you think of our Valerie’s latest acquisition?’ he whispered, crumpling her shoulder in his big hand and shaking
her like a doll.

The heat from the fire was unbearable. Such a reckless use of coal, and summer not yet ended.

‘I like the new grate,’ she said.

But he wasn’t listening. There was no mantelpiece: nowhere to stand her glass. Just a thin little ledge of cream tiles, and
above it a fancy mirror with scalloped edges. She could see her own face reflected – damp, as if she were rising up out of
the sea, with staring eyes, and behind her head young couples dancing cheek to cheek, circling and gliding out of the mirror.

‘This is my girl from up the street,’ said Cyril, thrusting her forward at an angle, yet still retaining a grip on her shoulder.

‘How d’you do,’ Margo said to the two young men who stood on the hearthrug, shaking hands with one, who smiled at her with
his beautifully rounded cheeks dimpling in welcome and went away to refill her glass, while she held Cyril upright and was
ready to save him if he toppled forwards.

She sweated under the combined heat of Cyril and the fierce flames that roared up the chimney. She took her replenished glass
when it came, endeavouring to stand a little straighter, sipping the drink rapidly before Cyril should spill it for her. She
had last tasted whisky four years ago at the height of the blitz when an ARP warden had given her some to steady her nerves.
She remembered the occasion with bitterness, having slipped on the
kerbstone in the blackout on her way home, raising a bump on her chin. Nellie said she was drunk.

‘This little lady,’ Cyril was saying, ‘is a soldier’s wife, through and through.’

Seized by an abrupt melancholy, he released Marge and stared down at the carpet.

‘Where is your husband stationed, Mam?’ The American looked at her with his head tilted deferentially to one side.

She was convulsed, choking on her drink. How richly oiled was the hair on his head, how smooth the skin beneath his eyes.
Her chest heaved with the effort of suppressing laughter.

‘Up there,’ she wheezed, rolling her eyes in the direction of the ceiling.

‘Dear God,’ said Cyril, shaking his head and yawning.

Deserting the three-piece suite, the couples rose to Ambrose and his Orchestra, clutching each other in the centre of the
room. Standing on the leather settee with legs bent, as if to take an unlikely leap into the dark, Cyril struggled to open
the window. Exhausted, he sank to his knees and leaned his forehead peacefully against the cushions, back turned on his jostling
guests, the yellow curtains shifting gently in the draught.

‘Dear me!’ remarked Margo. ‘Mr Mander is well away and no mistake.’

The young man with the dimples in his cheeks asked her to dance. She went with streaming eyes, fox-trotting across the carpet
in his arms. Silly really, in such a tiny
room – bumping into the sideboard, tripping over the rug. She was breathless before she had completed one turn of the floor.

‘Are you all right, Mam?’ he asked her, mistaking the marks on her cheeks for tears of distress.

‘Yes, yes,’ she assured him, and turned her head away for fear she should laugh again. It was no use explaining how she felt
about her dead husband from another war, it was so long ago. She hardy knew him to begin with, let alone remembered him now,
so many years on. She had always felt he was more Nellie’s relation than hers, seeing Nellie had nursed him towards death.
Whenever she had tiptoed upstairs, Nellie had told her to go away, he was resting; and even at the funeral it was Nellie that
did enough crying for both of them.

It was a relief when the record ended and the young man took his hand from her wrist. Wiping her eyes, she left him to look
for her glass and refill it from the bottle on the sideboard. She didn’t feel guilty; it hadn’t been come by honestly, so
why shouldn’t she have the benefit of it? Years ago Jack had given her a pad of cotton-wool soaked in whisky for the toothache.
‘Get rid of them,’ said Nellie contemptuously. ‘You don’t want any truck with those. Get yourself some nice new teeth.’ And
she did, though it took her six years to pay for them. Rita went to the dentist regularly – but then times had changed. Rita?
She went into the hall to search for her. The door was open on to the street. Mrs Evans at No. 9 was leaning out of her bedroom
window to get a shuftie
at the goings on. Margo caught a glimpse of a green velvet dress and a tall soldier with his hands in his pockets lounging
against the privet hedge.

She hesitated, and at that moment Mrs Mander called from the kitchen: ‘Marge, Marge, give us a hand with the eats!’

She couldn’t refuse, not being an invited guest in the first place.

‘Our Rita’s on the step,’ she said, ‘with a soldier. There’s no harm, is there?’

‘Get away,’ said Mrs Mander. ‘She’s seventeen.’ The display of food on the table was quite pre-war in style: a whole ham lying
in a bed of brown jelly; a bowl of real butter, like a slab of dripping, white as milk; on a dinner plate, piled high, a pyramid
of oranges. Margo sat down on a chair and looked.

‘It’s Chuck,’ said Mrs Mander. ‘He insisted.’

‘I was never in the limelight, was I?’ asked Margo.

‘You what?’ Mrs Mander paused from slicing bread.

‘You could never say I was made much of?’

‘You’ve been drinking, Marge,’ said Mrs Mander, relieved.

‘I’ve never felt,’ continued Margo, picking at the ham with her fingers, ‘that people took enough notice. I have got thoughts.’

‘Oh yes,’ said Mrs Mander.

‘You’ve got Cyril and George and your Valerie …’

‘Well, you’ve Rita.’

‘She’s not easy, you know. We’ve got her and we haven’t.’

At that moment Chuck came into the room and asked for an orange.

‘We’re going to play games,’ he said; ‘I want an orange,’ taking one from the dinner plate and beginning to tear the peel
from it.

‘That’s nice,’ said Mrs Mander. ‘What sort of a game?’

‘Napoleon’s eye,’ said Chuck. ‘Valerie knows it.’ And he went out with the fruit clamped in his sharp wolfish teeth.

After a time there was a lot of activity in the hall. Girls sat down giggling in the kitchen alongside Margo. She held her
head up and tried to concentrate. Shrieks came from the front room. A young woman in a grey costume appeared, wringing her
right hand and moaning with mock terror. ‘It’s awful,’ she cried, ‘it’s really awful.’

One by one the girls were taken into the other room. At last they came for Margo.

‘Get off,’ she protested. But they blindfolded her and led her away. She was aware of men’s hands holding her, spinning her
round in a circle.

‘You are now on the flag ship,’ drawled an unfamiliar voice, and she was lifted in the air and rocked like a baby.

‘Oh, oh, oh,’ she screamed, little flecks of light dancing before her eyes.

‘It is a rough and stormy night. You are about to meet Napoleon, greatest of British admirals.’

Her hand was held in a dry palm. She sat down on something soft and yielding.

‘How do you do ! Pleased to meet you.’

‘How do you do,’ repeated Marge, her hand pumping up and down.

‘Feel his head,’ said the voice, and she stroked at something slippery, like satin – quilted like a tea cosy.

‘Get away,’ she screeched, ‘it’s a cosy.’

‘This is his good arm – this is his bad arm.’

She felt a bandaged wrist, a bulky object. All around, the air was filled with whispers, instructions, smothered bursts of
merriment. She was like a dog, pointing her nose to scent the wind, sitting there in her best crêpe dress, helpless.

‘This is Napoleon’s good eye,’ said a girl’s voice, and her nails flicked skin. She could feel the quivering eyeball beneath
the lid.

‘And this is Napoleon’s bad eye –’

All at once her finger was seized firmly by the root and stabbed fiercely downwards. Into moist juicy flesh. She screamed
thinly, over and over, shaking with revulsion while the cloth was torn from her eyes and she saw Chuck grinning at her with
the obscenely fingered orange lying in his palm. Woken by the commotion, Cyril stirred by her side. He pulled her down across
him and she lay with beating heart against his white shirt.

‘It’s not Napoleon,’ she protested, ‘it’s Nelson,’ and closed her eyes.

When she awoke, the room was in darkness save for firelight. There was a couple in the armchair against the wall and a young
man dozing on the floor. She struggled upright, disentangling herself from the still-slumbering Cyril, thinking of Rita. Mrs
Mander was in the kitchen amidst a debris of food.

‘Feeling better, are you?’ she asked. ‘I saved you some
ham.’ And she handed her a plate lined with pink meat and a slice of bread and butter.

‘I must find our Rita.’

There was a sour taste in Margo’s throat and she felt as if she’d been up all night working.

‘She’s most like upstairs,’ said Mrs Mander. ‘They’re playing sardines.’

‘Sardines?’

‘Somebody hides and whoever finds them like, hides with them. You know – girls and boys.’ She winked a mascaraed eye. ‘Didn’t
you ever play it?’

‘They got the last game wrong,’ said Margo crossly. ‘It was never Napoleon.’

She resolutely put down her plate of ham and went into the hall. The trouble with the Manders’ house was that it pretended
to be different from hers and Nellie’s. No landmarks anywhere. Everything old had been ripped out and replaced by something
modern, unfamiliar. A recess lit by a lamp where the cupboard under the stairs would have been; a whole window of glass put
in the hall at the side of the front door. To give more light, Mrs Mander said. Light was meant to be outside – that was the
point of living inside. And anyway it was sheer foolishness, considering the bombing could start up again. There might even
be doodlebugs, and they’d be sorry they hadn’t kept the bricks.